9 ms·

Where Educational Technology Fails: A seventh-grader's perspective

54 points by subdomain 11mo ago

mjevans 11mo ago
Maybe work should be put into make the curriculum more engaging so that it's less drudgery and boring work and more rewarding. A practical example of this from fitness is turning exercise into a sport.
- Razengan 11mo ago
  Early school should be like a game onboarding tutorial for this world: "You are a human." "You are on this planet." "This is what this world is like." "This is what humans have made so far." "This is what's out there." and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their own goals instead of just funneling them into the endless capitalist churn.
  - analog31 11mo ago
    "You are a human." "Here's the refrigerator." "Here's a cell phone."
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      Of course, actually yes: Expose new humans to the latest technology right away, WHILE it's still awe-inspiring to them, before it become as routine as breathing, and explain how it's made, how we got there, and how life was before then. That'd be a much better way of teaching multiple subjects that are boring and irrelevant on their own. You're not supposed to have phones or computers in class but you're supposed to somehow be interested in the math and other sciences that make those things possible? You go home and your life there is much more entertaining than in school, but you have no idea how what you're being taught in school ties into the things at home.
      - analog31 11mo ago
        I don't think a way of teaching has been found, that doesn't require a willingness to be at least moderately bored, and that isn't to some extent disconnected from everyday life. Even using computers in class, which I endorse, involves acceptance that many of the uses will seem boring. Making everything as entertaining as commercial media is too much to ask.
        Razengan 11mo ago
        One just needs an exciting goal to reach, something to look forward to. For me for example, a lot of the work in developing the game is mundane boilerplate and looking up solutions to solved problems, but I can bear through it because I really want to play the game I'm trying to make. Education should optimize for finding such "goals" for each individual person, instead of just finding a "use" for each person to be put to, as another poster put it.
  - LoFiSamurai 11mo ago
    Do you have kids? You’re going straight to planets huh.
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      No but I think I can still think like one and I can remember what would have gotten my interest back then before dropping out because video games were so much more interesting :') Before I realized this world is just as interesting, but school does everything to make you bored of it before you can explore it.
      - wakawaka28 11mo ago
        Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything is boring work. That even goes for the individual tasks. Found a good physics problem? Well, you might be excited about it but 95% of solving it is going to be thinking about assumptions and doing rote mathematical manipulations. You are likely to get sick of it before even getting to any answer, much less the right one. There are also many important/useful fields that are not very interesting. In a sense, the most important thing school does is to build up within students a tolerance of boredom and an appreciation of the fact that most work is potentially boring.
        Razengan 11mo ago
        > Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything is boring work. You can plow through boring work if the end goal is exciting. For example, when developing a game that you yourself want to play :)
        wakawaka28 11mo ago
        Most people are not like that. Even playing video games will be boring, if it's your JOB. Much more so if you need to do hundreds of hours of cerebral work to get to the point where you can have a little fun lol...
  - onionisafruit 11mo ago
    “This is what the world is like” is a full education in itself.
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      Again, it doesn't have to be an info dump, like how education is now and has forever been, just reciting rote explanations to questions nobody (at that age) asks. Just enough to get you hooked into the "game" you've just spawned into.
      - nemomarx 11mo ago
        does this ever work in tutorials in games? People skip the explanations and then complain later that they're confused or didn't know x and y feature existed. We already have people say they wish they'd learned how to do their taxes or balance budgets - imagine what 12 year olds might think is uninteresting that comes up later, right?
        Razengan 11mo ago
        In the last 20 years or so, how much of the knowledge that we know and use in life is from what we learned in school (and remember) versus looking it up on the internet or asking someone only during the moment we need that knowledge?
  - jayd16 11mo ago
    Grammar and reading comprehension are important and can be enjoyable or at least unlock the enjoyment of understanding literature ...but I seriously doubt a 10 year old is going to think to take a class in it on their own.
  - wakawaka28 11mo ago
    >and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their own goals instead of just funneling them into the endless capitalist churn. This "capitalist churn" is how we get things done for society. While some exploration makes sense, the vast majority of people are not gifted in the arts or endowed with genius. They must be prepared for life with basic skills that can be put to good use. Even under communist "utopian" regimes, children are forced to do basically the same stuff they do under capitalist regimes, because people and their needs are the same under both.
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      > They must be prepared for life with basic skills that can be put to good use. There are 8 billion people. Not every single one can be ""put to good use"" We have enough technology now to let people slow down and fucking chill a bit.
      - wakawaka28 11mo ago
        The point is, you have to try to encourage people to be better, and if you're lucky they will at least turn out ok. The default human condition is to be lazy and unambitious. Nobody is actually hurt by a bit of discipline in their formative years.
  - giantg2 11mo ago
    "You are a human." "You are on this planet." "This is what this world is like." "This is what humans have made so far." "This is what's out there." That's basically what school is. Many of these topics can't be explained in reasonable detail and complexity until after 10 years old.
- analog31 11mo ago
  Just have overworked teachers with minimal tech savvy compete for engagement with trillion dollar companies that employ armies of psychologists and programmers, and who have popular momentum on their side. Have them do this without turning into the industry they're competing with. I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my concerts if I just come up with material that's more engaging than Taylor Swift.
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    > I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my concerts if I just come up with material that's more engaging than Taylor Swift. Even without knowing anything about your music, I'm 98 % certain that I would prefer to go to your concert than to a Taylor Swift concert. :-)
    - antonvs 11mo ago
      The key part that wasn't mentioned is "...more engaging to a mass audience."
- clickety_clack 11mo ago
  The tough thing is probably trying to make it Type 2 fun, where hard work leads to rewards rather than Type 1 fun that’s basically just entertainment. Ultimately, learning something new is always kind of painful, and learning to push through that pain is in itself a key lesson you have to learn for adult life.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    No. Fun is learning. You've just internalized an ugly perspective.
    - mindslight 11mo ago
      So are you saying that binge watching a TV series is just as educational as learning a new programming language?
      - graemep 11mo ago
        No, but learning a new programming language can be more fun than watching a TV series. This forum has plenty of past comments from people who have learned a programming language for fun when they could have spent that time watching a TV series.
        card_zero 11mo ago
        Exactly! Also, depending on the person, in fact yes.
        mindslight 11mo ago
        "Learning is fun" for the right type of person is a far cry from an assertion of "fun is learning" that implies whenever someone is having fun, they're learning. The point is that getting to a place where learning a new programming language is fun requires developing a lot of skill and willpower, which can easily be short circuited by things that are fun but not learning.
- card_zero 11mo ago
  Less drudgery and boring work? How about not drudgery and not boring. To accomplish this the thing has to be optional, and it has to be freely chosen. No amount of window dressing on a thing you're forced to do makes it truly fun. But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated, and so we get endless "make learning fun!" crap on top of compulsory drudgery.
  - jacknews 11mo ago
    Life is not all fun. You need to learn how to buckle up and just get it done.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      "Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive. It's sadly true, you end up learning to be pragmatic and defeated.
      - giantg2 11mo ago
        'Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive.' If one chooses the modern life, then they're stuck within the constraints of society. You could be nearly self sufficient, but that would be even more difficult.
    - hereme888 11mo ago
      But school is 13 years of mostly boring, stressful and irrelevant learning. What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work? None except the small percent of academically-oriented personalities. Teacher: "today we're going to learn about the three types of rocks, and the quadratic equation." Student: "what for? I've never seen an adult discuss or use that in real life." Teacher: "you might need it some day, and its part of the curriculum."
      - gf000 11mo ago
        Well, (some?) humans have inherent curiosity about how to world operates, see all the litany of questions small children have. Education should attempt to somehow tap into that as a core motivation, though that will surely not be enough or good for everyone. But learning is work, and there is no way around that.
- giantg2 11mo ago
  They already have tons interesting and gamified stuff in schools. Part of learning should also include how to tackle subjects you find boring. Discipline and perseverance are useful life skills that I think are increasingly disappearing.
jacknews 11mo ago
"teach kids how to use technology responsibly" OK I teach a code club. I try to get the students excited and focused, and especially on projects where they work together, it generally works really well, even for students who obviously aren't quite 'into it'. But at absolutely any opportunity where they are not focused (and there's always someone) they try to play roblox or other games. They try to have it running in the background and switch. And even installed a workspace switcher so it wasn't obvious they had game windows open. It's really like highly addictive drugs. For kids, at least, the best solution is to make them unavailable while they are supposed to be learning.
- card_zero 11mo ago
  This is because they like playing Roblox, and are getting something out of playing Roblox, and are not persuaded that your thing is more rewarding for them, and unless you can pull a miracle of engaging enthusiasm out of the bag they're right.
  - jacknews 11mo ago
    So if they take crack cocaine instead of literature class, they're right too? Sorry, but learning is actually a slog. The best we can do is get them addicted to learning, instead of gaming, but let's help them on the way by removing the gaming temptation while they are in class.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      Learning is not a slog. Cramming for exams, that's a slog, but only tenuously relates to learning. OK, so sometimes a person may get all fired up about a project and slog through reams of - effort - in order to get some stage done, out of a deep desire to see what happens next. And from an external perspective that seems very worthy because it seems deeper than something that's just constantly rewarding. But is it necessary, proper, that any given person be doing such a deep and onerous thing all the time? Or even very often? Is it for the external observer, who knows nothing of the person's internal processes and feelings, to decide these things? Mind your own beeswax. Crack doesn't count, IMO, because it games the system. Probably now you'll say something to compare Roblox unironically to crack "because dopamine". Did you know, we get dopamine released when doing anything we enjoy? But there's always a lot of people ready to claim that electronic devices are literally addictive, because it's a trendy thing to say, and the pressure of this opinion is like a physical force, a great gaseous mass of idiots. I shouldn't have got involved with this conversation, I have important video games to play.
petermcneeley 11mo ago
The word your looking for is Discipline. The way to control babies and animals it to simply take it away from them. This is not the way to control twelve year olds.
- Retric 11mo ago
  That’s a strategy doomed to failure. 12 year old kids are still developing the brain structures to be able to handle discipline. Meanwhile a large fraction of adults are failing to do what you’re expecting a 12 year old to get right. When you look around and everyone is suddenly overweight and addicted to their phones humans didn’t suddenly lose willpower, their environment changed.
  - petermcneeley 11mo ago
    Sure but in less than 6 years your 12 year old is a complete adult. You must give them the gift of Adult discipline in that short period of time. Without that you will get the result in your final sentence.
    - TeaDrunk 11mo ago
      I would argue that 18 is not a complete adult just one defined legally as an adult by our legal system. I would argue that the definition of complete adult is relatively arbitrary and mostly cultural. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
      - graemep 11mo ago
        I agree that an 18 year old is not fully developed, but they have to be able to make sensible decisions by the time they are legally an adult, because you have no means of stopping them any more. At the very least enough sense to know when they need to ask for advice. Heinlein is right in principle but its a big ask. can do quite a bit of that list, but I have never butchered a hog or conned a ship or planned an invasion. I am pretty sure I could pitch manure but finding out whether you can die gallantly is likely to be the last thing you find out.
pessimizer 11mo ago
There isn't any educational technology. There are (and have been, for decades, accomplishing nothing) a bunch of companies trying to come up with ways to exploit educational institutions to create revolving income streams and failing. Letting kids access the internet at school is just an admission of complete failure, being bad at blocking bad sites doesn't make that failure any worse. No phones, no internet at school. If you can't bring enough material into the building within books and teacher's brains to teach, you're terrible and pointless. Leave the screens to their software and programming classes. I'd say it will be a blessing when this debacle is replaced with AI, except the AI will also come from the revolving income stream guys, and will also have children's well-being as an afterthought. It will be the same failure, but with 4x the margin going to 1/100 the previous number of vendors, just like every "tech advance" in the past decade.
- 28304283409234 11mo ago
  Parent of two teenagers. Came here to say exactly this.
- Scubabear68 11mo ago
  This. Exactly this. The answer isn’t some fancy security software or screening, it is much simpler: no software, period. The bulk of school should be learning in a classroom, computers are not required. They can and should be allowed in limited doses early on, and can build over time, particularly as courses either obviously require it or the computers truly facilitate the learning. We had her public school teachers trying to tell us the answer to our daughter’s reading issues was more screen time. We ended up sending her to a private religious school with very limited screen time, and she is now an A and B student. This is a huge problem in public schools because state and federal governments are complicit in burying kids (and parents!) in unnecessary technology. During Covid, the feds flooded schools with literal billions of dollars that did not go to better teachers, it went to smart boards and MacBook pros and iPads and dozens of “School as a Service” providers who existed only to extract money from clueless superintendents who have a seemingly endless supply of tax money to draw from.
- Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  I teach a 5th grade computer science class at my school. We just finished our "chatbot" project. I thought the kids some very simple Python syntax--assigning variables, concatenating strings, input, print, if, elif, else--and they made programs that could have a conversation with the user. I suppose I could have done this without internet on air-gapped laptops. They do need laptops though, and the internet makes it much easier for them to submit their work for me to review after class. I realize that a bounded computer science class probably isn't what you're talking about. However, my school has in fact really been trying to clamp down on technology use this year, and it has been challenging for the computer science department!
mariodiana 11mo ago
I'm may be a little off-topic here (but I don't think so). In my opinion, elementary school (grades K-5) should really focus a good deal on rote memorization, but only if this focuses on teaching every kind of game and technique to facilitate that kind of learning. By that I mean making flash cards, learning to create and use mnemonic devices, etc. I just asked ChatGPT, and got something like 15 different techniques, some of which can be used with kindergarteners, all of which can be used by grade 5. There are always going to be "boring" things to learn. These things are often no longer boring once you know them by heart. In fact, they're often extremely valuable to know. I think by grade 5, if kids are going to be taught anything, they need to be taught the techniques that they can use—on their own—to make learning fun.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  This is the classical approach where early education ("grammar") is focused on learning facts.
  - mariodiana 11mo ago
    Yes. But I'm adding that learning methods should be explicitly taught, to where they become second nature to the student.
- Herring 11mo ago
  In my opinion too many people have opinions where they shouldn't. Just import a working system, like Estonia successfully imported from Finland. You don't have the skills to roll your own.
drivebyhooting 11mo ago
That was exceptionally well written for a 7th grader.
- anonymouskimmer 11mo ago
  I plugged it into a couple of free readability analyzers and got 10th - 12th grade reading levels. https://charactercalculator.com/readability-checker/ https://charactercalculator.com/readability-checker/ - Reading Level: 10th to 12th grade - Reading Score: 59.00 - Reading Note: Fairly difficult to read https://hemingwayapp.com/readability-checker https://hemingwayapp.com/readability-checker - Readability checker: Grade 10; OK. Aim for 9. - 5 of 19 sentences are very hard to read. - 6 of 19 sentences are hard to read. There are some poor word choices[1], but yes, all in all this 7th grader is definitely writing above grade level. Hopefully his English teachers give him feedback pertinent to his demonstrated ability. [1] - E.g. "That’s not to say a school’s system is necessarily completely ineffective. Last year, my school had left unblocked the spammy-sounding Unblocked Games 66." would be easier to understand if re-written as: "That’s not to say a school’s system is completely ineffective. Last year, my school failed to block the spammy-sounding "Unblocked Games 66.""
- 650 11mo ago
  There are multiple em dashes present. I strongly suspect AI help.
  - aerostable_slug 11mo ago
    I hate this trend because I use em dashes a lot in my writing. Someone tell the AIs to throttle back on them a bit — people might think I'm using AI when I'm not.
    - carsoon 11mo ago
      I don't understand how people use or got used to using em dahshes? How do you even type them? theres no button for it so are you manually inserting, copy pasting it and why not just use a hyphen - instead of an en dash? Was this taught in schools or is it some form of technical writing?
gampleman 11mo ago
Where has educational technology not been failing?
riedel 11mo ago
This reminds me of the times playing snake on our TI 84 calculators.
kkfx 11mo ago
You can't force people to learn, you must interest them, and FLOSS desktops would help much, if well presented. Otherwise you only create dysfunctional dictatorship who only exalt conformism and mediocrity.
armchairhacker 11mo ago
I think laws/regulations are very similar. "Obvious" ones are good (e.g. violence, food safety), analogous to "of course they should block actually inappropriate content". But you can't force people and companies to behave via laws and regulations, and fine-grained laws and regulations don't work, because of loopholes. To get a healthy society, you must teach people how to behave, then (again, still explicitly prevent serious crimes, but otherwise) trust them. Some will take advantage of the system, but they may still face natural and social consequences, and some abuse of the system is OK.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago
  > But you can't force people and companies to behave via laws and regulations I guess I’m not really following where this logic is going. Are you saying “therefore we should not have laws and regulations”? I highly doubt that’s what you actually mean, but I am unsure how to parse what you do mean if not that.
  - armchairhacker 11mo ago
    We should have laws and regulations for things that are important and (relatively) easy to define and enforce. But laws and regulations aren't enough, because people find loopholes, and trying to patch these loopholes with more laws and regulations doesn't work. Examples of "obvious" laws and regulations: physical violence should be policed, companies should have to pay salaries and have basic restrictions on work hours, safety, sanitation, etc. Examples of things that can't really be regulated: "gambling" and "harmful social media". When does a game become "gambling"? When does a site become "social media" and "harmful"? Various countries have legal definitions for these, but they're very long, so companies find loopholes (e.g. sports betting, loot-boxes); or they straight-up break the laws, but the government doesn't bother to enforce them, because it's too difficult and the general population doesn't notice or care enough. Complex and ineffective laws and regulations also tend to have unintended consequences, like Balatro being considered "gambling" in Australia, and the UK's "Online Safety Act" affecting small forums. Part of the reason is that the people writing and enforcing laws and regulations themselves are corrupt. But this goes back to the source: you can't police those people with more laws, because their enforcers are also corrupt, and so on. A society is controlled and its morality is defined by its people, so to some extent, a society must teach its people to be moral and give them the leeway to still behave immoral.
BobbyTables2 11mo ago
Teaching has gotten lazy. In my day, tests were on paper and collected at the end of class. Now they’re online and kids exchange answers by taking the cell phone to the bathroom. Or they will exploit the online nature and compare answers during the passing period AFTER the class a submit it before the next class starts. Teachers can’t be bothered to close the test when class ends! Instead of being 25-50% short response, tests are all multiple choice so they can be automatically graded. To think my teachers recorded grades in a ledger and computed averages by hand for classes of 35+ students…
- jeffjeffbear 11mo ago
  > Teachers can’t be bothered to close the test when class ends! What about students who need extra time, which can be part of an IEP, and other issues, I don't think that part is lazy. Also a decent amount of the usage of Canvas or similar LMS's is subject to school or district wide rules. Edit: I taught highschool CS during the pandemic to try to help out with issues in my district.
- empressplay 11mo ago
  Project-based learning / assessment is much more common now. Students have to explain their process when they present their projects, and answer questions, which ensures they did the work. These projects make up most of their grades.
  - samarthr1 11mo ago
    Wasn't the push for standardized testing to reduce biases introduced by personal examination?
- SiempreViernes 11mo ago
  > Back in my day there was nothing wrong with how testing happened, I know because I succeeded in that system. The above is maybe not an entirely fair summary, but I think it captures the spirit of Bobby's comment in vivid detail.
- parsimo2010 11mo ago
ryukoposting 11mo ago
Before I lodge my criticism: the kid's right. DNS blocking has always been a non-solution to the "kids screwing around on school computers" problem. When I was his age, we'd pull up breadfish.co.uk on all the computers in a single pod in the library, then un-mute all of them at once. They blocked breadfish, but then we just started pulling it up on youtube. 1:1 ed tech (e.g. chromebooks) probably exacerbates the problem because kids have a single machine that's their own. They can customize it as they please, for better and worse. When I was his age, my school's thin clients would wipe most of your customizations every time you logged out. For the handful of standalone desktops, you'd still have to set stuff up on each machine individually. This limited the effectiveness of the various tricks we played to get past IT guardrails. I think the title is a little misleading, though. The essay details why DNS-level blocking doesn't work in educational environments. The title suggests it'd talk about why ed-tech fails in a more general case. Remember, projectors, document cameras, VHS players, and Smart boards were all red-hot tech at some point. Even today, ed-tech is more than just computers assigned to kids.
singpolyma3 11mo ago
It's depressing that anyone would call internet censorship "educational technology"
mr_frog 11mo ago
I was just looking for unblocked games what is this website
lunias 11mo ago
Sounds pretty similar to how I felt in middle school. I learned a lot while getting around their silly controls. I'm sure things are much more locked down today, but where there's a will there's a way!
mr_frog 11mo ago
Hola
- mr_frog 11mo ago
  I didnt know the will work

54 points by subdomain 11mo ago

Maybe work should be put into make the curriculum more engaging so that it's less drudgery and boring work and more rewarding. A practical example of this from fitness is turning exercise into a sport.

Razengan 11mo ago
Early school should be like a game onboarding tutorial for this world: "You are a human." "You are on this planet." "This is what this world is like." "This is what humans have made so far." "This is what's out there." and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their own goals instead of just funneling them into the endless capitalist churn.
- analog31 11mo ago
  "You are a human." "Here's the refrigerator." "Here's a cell phone."
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    Of course, actually yes: Expose new humans to the latest technology right away, WHILE it's still awe-inspiring to them, before it become as routine as breathing, and explain how it's made, how we got there, and how life was before then. That'd be a much better way of teaching multiple subjects that are boring and irrelevant on their own. You're not supposed to have phones or computers in class but you're supposed to somehow be interested in the math and other sciences that make those things possible? You go home and your life there is much more entertaining than in school, but you have no idea how what you're being taught in school ties into the things at home.
    - analog31 11mo ago
      I don't think a way of teaching has been found, that doesn't require a willingness to be at least moderately bored, and that isn't to some extent disconnected from everyday life. Even using computers in class, which I endorse, involves acceptance that many of the uses will seem boring. Making everything as entertaining as commercial media is too much to ask.
      - Razengan 11mo ago
        One just needs an exciting goal to reach, something to look forward to. For me for example, a lot of the work in developing the game is mundane boilerplate and looking up solutions to solved problems, but I can bear through it because I really want to play the game I'm trying to make. Education should optimize for finding such "goals" for each individual person, instead of just finding a "use" for each person to be put to, as another poster put it.
- LoFiSamurai 11mo ago
  Do you have kids? You’re going straight to planets huh.
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    No but I think I can still think like one and I can remember what would have gotten my interest back then before dropping out because video games were so much more interesting :') Before I realized this world is just as interesting, but school does everything to make you bored of it before you can explore it.
    - wakawaka28 11mo ago
      Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything is boring work. That even goes for the individual tasks. Found a good physics problem? Well, you might be excited about it but 95% of solving it is going to be thinking about assumptions and doing rote mathematical manipulations. You are likely to get sick of it before even getting to any answer, much less the right one. There are also many important/useful fields that are not very interesting. In a sense, the most important thing school does is to build up within students a tolerance of boredom and an appreciation of the fact that most work is potentially boring.
      - Razengan 11mo ago
        > Even in the most interesting fields, 95% of everything is boring work. You can plow through boring work if the end goal is exciting. For example, when developing a game that you yourself want to play :)
        wakawaka28 11mo ago
        Most people are not like that. Even playing video games will be boring, if it's your JOB. Much more so if you need to do hundreds of hours of cerebral work to get to the point where you can have a little fun lol...
- onionisafruit 11mo ago
  “This is what the world is like” is a full education in itself.
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    Again, it doesn't have to be an info dump, like how education is now and has forever been, just reciting rote explanations to questions nobody (at that age) asks. Just enough to get you hooked into the "game" you've just spawned into.
    - nemomarx 11mo ago
      does this ever work in tutorials in games? People skip the explanations and then complain later that they're confused or didn't know x and y feature existed. We already have people say they wish they'd learned how to do their taxes or balance budgets - imagine what 12 year olds might think is uninteresting that comes up later, right?
      - Razengan 11mo ago
        In the last 20 years or so, how much of the knowledge that we know and use in life is from what we learned in school (and remember) versus looking it up on the internet or asking someone only during the moment we need that knowledge?
- jayd16 11mo ago
  Grammar and reading comprehension are important and can be enjoyable or at least unlock the enjoyment of understanding literature ...but I seriously doubt a 10 year old is going to think to take a class in it on their own.
- wakawaka28 11mo ago
  >and then let people be free from 10-20 to figure out their own goals instead of just funneling them into the endless capitalist churn. This "capitalist churn" is how we get things done for society. While some exploration makes sense, the vast majority of people are not gifted in the arts or endowed with genius. They must be prepared for life with basic skills that can be put to good use. Even under communist "utopian" regimes, children are forced to do basically the same stuff they do under capitalist regimes, because people and their needs are the same under both.
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    > They must be prepared for life with basic skills that can be put to good use. There are 8 billion people. Not every single one can be ""put to good use"" We have enough technology now to let people slow down and fucking chill a bit.
    - wakawaka28 11mo ago
      The point is, you have to try to encourage people to be better, and if you're lucky they will at least turn out ok. The default human condition is to be lazy and unambitious. Nobody is actually hurt by a bit of discipline in their formative years.
- giantg2 11mo ago
  "You are a human." "You are on this planet." "This is what this world is like." "This is what humans have made so far." "This is what's out there." That's basically what school is. Many of these topics can't be explained in reasonable detail and complexity until after 10 years old.
analog31 11mo ago
Just have overworked teachers with minimal tech savvy compete for engagement with trillion dollar companies that employ armies of psychologists and programmers, and who have popular momentum on their side. Have them do this without turning into the industry they're competing with. I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my concerts if I just come up with material that's more engaging than Taylor Swift.
- aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
  > I'm a musician. I could get more people to come to my concerts if I just come up with material that's more engaging than Taylor Swift. Even without knowing anything about your music, I'm 98 % certain that I would prefer to go to your concert than to a Taylor Swift concert. :-)
  - antonvs 11mo ago
    The key part that wasn't mentioned is "...more engaging to a mass audience."
clickety_clack 11mo ago
The tough thing is probably trying to make it Type 2 fun, where hard work leads to rewards rather than Type 1 fun that’s basically just entertainment. Ultimately, learning something new is always kind of painful, and learning to push through that pain is in itself a key lesson you have to learn for adult life.
- card_zero 11mo ago
  No. Fun is learning. You've just internalized an ugly perspective.
  - mindslight 11mo ago
    So are you saying that binge watching a TV series is just as educational as learning a new programming language?
    - graemep 11mo ago
      No, but learning a new programming language can be more fun than watching a TV series. This forum has plenty of past comments from people who have learned a programming language for fun when they could have spent that time watching a TV series.
      - card_zero 11mo ago
        Exactly! Also, depending on the person, in fact yes.
      - mindslight 11mo ago
        "Learning is fun" for the right type of person is a far cry from an assertion of "fun is learning" that implies whenever someone is having fun, they're learning. The point is that getting to a place where learning a new programming language is fun requires developing a lot of skill and willpower, which can easily be short circuited by things that are fun but not learning.
card_zero 11mo ago
Less drudgery and boring work? How about not drudgery and not boring. To accomplish this the thing has to be optional, and it has to be freely chosen. No amount of window dressing on a thing you're forced to do makes it truly fun. But that's not possible, allowing kids the choice to possibly not be educated, and so we get endless "make learning fun!" crap on top of compulsory drudgery.
- jacknews 11mo ago
  Life is not all fun. You need to learn how to buckle up and just get it done.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    "Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive. It's sadly true, you end up learning to be pragmatic and defeated.
    - giantg2 11mo ago
      'Life" seems to be a codeword for other people being obstructive.' If one chooses the modern life, then they're stuck within the constraints of society. You could be nearly self sufficient, but that would be even more difficult.
  - hereme888 11mo ago
    But school is 13 years of mostly boring, stressful and irrelevant learning. What adult on earth would willingly take up that sort of work? None except the small percent of academically-oriented personalities. Teacher: "today we're going to learn about the three types of rocks, and the quadratic equation." Student: "what for? I've never seen an adult discuss or use that in real life." Teacher: "you might need it some day, and its part of the curriculum."
    - gf000 11mo ago
      Well, (some?) humans have inherent curiosity about how to world operates, see all the litany of questions small children have. Education should attempt to somehow tap into that as a core motivation, though that will surely not be enough or good for everyone. But learning is work, and there is no way around that.
giantg2 11mo ago
They already have tons interesting and gamified stuff in schools. Part of learning should also include how to tackle subjects you find boring. Discipline and perseverance are useful life skills that I think are increasingly disappearing.

jacknews 11mo ago

"teach kids how to use technology responsibly" OK I teach a code club. I try to get the students excited and focused, and especially on projects where they work together, it generally works really well, even for students who obviously aren't quite 'into it'. But at absolutely any opportunity where they are not focused (and there's always someone) they try to play roblox or other games. They try to have it running in the background and switch. And even installed a workspace switcher so it wasn't obvious they had game windows open. It's really like highly addictive drugs. For kids, at least, the best solution is to make them unavailable while they are supposed to be learning.

card_zero 11mo ago
This is because they like playing Roblox, and are getting something out of playing Roblox, and are not persuaded that your thing is more rewarding for them, and unless you can pull a miracle of engaging enthusiasm out of the bag they're right.
- jacknews 11mo ago
  So if they take crack cocaine instead of literature class, they're right too? Sorry, but learning is actually a slog. The best we can do is get them addicted to learning, instead of gaming, but let's help them on the way by removing the gaming temptation while they are in class.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    Learning is not a slog. Cramming for exams, that's a slog, but only tenuously relates to learning. OK, so sometimes a person may get all fired up about a project and slog through reams of - effort - in order to get some stage done, out of a deep desire to see what happens next. And from an external perspective that seems very worthy because it seems deeper than something that's just constantly rewarding. But is it necessary, proper, that any given person be doing such a deep and onerous thing all the time? Or even very often? Is it for the external observer, who knows nothing of the person's internal processes and feelings, to decide these things? Mind your own beeswax. Crack doesn't count, IMO, because it games the system. Probably now you'll say something to compare Roblox unironically to crack "because dopamine". Did you know, we get dopamine released when doing anything we enjoy? But there's always a lot of people ready to claim that electronic devices are literally addictive, because it's a trendy thing to say, and the pressure of this opinion is like a physical force, a great gaseous mass of idiots. I shouldn't have got involved with this conversation, I have important video games to play.

petermcneeley 11mo ago

The word your looking for is Discipline. The way to control babies and animals it to simply take it away from them. This is not the way to control twelve year olds.

Retric 11mo ago
That’s a strategy doomed to failure. 12 year old kids are still developing the brain structures to be able to handle discipline. Meanwhile a large fraction of adults are failing to do what you’re expecting a 12 year old to get right. When you look around and everyone is suddenly overweight and addicted to their phones humans didn’t suddenly lose willpower, their environment changed.
- petermcneeley 11mo ago
  Sure but in less than 6 years your 12 year old is a complete adult. You must give them the gift of Adult discipline in that short period of time. Without that you will get the result in your final sentence.
  - TeaDrunk 11mo ago
    I would argue that 18 is not a complete adult just one defined legally as an adult by our legal system. I would argue that the definition of complete adult is relatively arbitrary and mostly cultural. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
    - graemep 11mo ago
      I agree that an 18 year old is not fully developed, but they have to be able to make sensible decisions by the time they are legally an adult, because you have no means of stopping them any more. At the very least enough sense to know when they need to ask for advice. Heinlein is right in principle but its a big ask. can do quite a bit of that list, but I have never butchered a hog or conned a ship or planned an invasion. I am pretty sure I could pitch manure but finding out whether you can die gallantly is likely to be the last thing you find out.

pessimizer 11mo ago

There isn't any educational technology. There are (and have been, for decades, accomplishing nothing) a bunch of companies trying to come up with ways to exploit educational institutions to create revolving income streams and failing. Letting kids access the internet at school is just an admission of complete failure, being bad at blocking bad sites doesn't make that failure any worse. No phones, no internet at school. If you can't bring enough material into the building within books and teacher's brains to teach, you're terrible and pointless. Leave the screens to their software and programming classes. I'd say it will be a blessing when this debacle is replaced with AI, except the AI will also come from the revolving income stream guys, and will also have children's well-being as an afterthought. It will be the same failure, but with 4x the margin going to 1/100 the previous number of vendors, just like every "tech advance" in the past decade.

28304283409234 11mo ago
Parent of two teenagers. Came here to say exactly this.
Scubabear68 11mo ago
This. Exactly this. The answer isn’t some fancy security software or screening, it is much simpler: no software, period. The bulk of school should be learning in a classroom, computers are not required. They can and should be allowed in limited doses early on, and can build over time, particularly as courses either obviously require it or the computers truly facilitate the learning. We had her public school teachers trying to tell us the answer to our daughter’s reading issues was more screen time. We ended up sending her to a private religious school with very limited screen time, and she is now an A and B student. This is a huge problem in public schools because state and federal governments are complicit in burying kids (and parents!) in unnecessary technology. During Covid, the feds flooded schools with literal billions of dollars that did not go to better teachers, it went to smart boards and MacBook pros and iPads and dozens of “School as a Service” providers who existed only to extract money from clueless superintendents who have a seemingly endless supply of tax money to draw from.
Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
I teach a 5th grade computer science class at my school. We just finished our "chatbot" project. I thought the kids some very simple Python syntax--assigning variables, concatenating strings, input, print, if, elif, else--and they made programs that could have a conversation with the user. I suppose I could have done this without internet on air-gapped laptops. They do need laptops though, and the internet makes it much easier for them to submit their work for me to review after class. I realize that a bounded computer science class probably isn't what you're talking about. However, my school has in fact really been trying to clamp down on technology use this year, and it has been challenging for the computer science department!

mariodiana 11mo ago

I'm may be a little off-topic here (but I don't think so). In my opinion, elementary school (grades K-5) should really focus a good deal on rote memorization, but only if this focuses on teaching every kind of game and technique to facilitate that kind of learning. By that I mean making flash cards, learning to create and use mnemonic devices, etc. I just asked ChatGPT, and got something like 15 different techniques, some of which can be used with kindergarteners, all of which can be used by grade 5. There are always going to be "boring" things to learn. These things are often no longer boring once you know them by heart. In fact, they're often extremely valuable to know. I think by grade 5, if kids are going to be taught anything, they need to be taught the techniques that they can use—on their own—to make learning fun.

SoftTalker 11mo ago
This is the classical approach where early education ("grammar") is focused on learning facts.
- mariodiana 11mo ago
  Yes. But I'm adding that learning methods should be explicitly taught, to where they become second nature to the student.
Herring 11mo ago
In my opinion too many people have opinions where they shouldn't. Just import a working system, like Estonia successfully imported from Finland. You don't have the skills to roll your own.

drivebyhooting 11mo ago

That was exceptionally well written for a 7th grader.

anonymouskimmer 11mo ago
I plugged it into a couple of free readability analyzers and got 10th - 12th grade reading levels. https://charactercalculator.com/readability-checker/ https://charactercalculator.com/readability-checker/ - Reading Level: 10th to 12th grade - Reading Score: 59.00 - Reading Note: Fairly difficult to read https://hemingwayapp.com/readability-checker https://hemingwayapp.com/readability-checker - Readability checker: Grade 10; OK. Aim for 9. - 5 of 19 sentences are very hard to read. - 6 of 19 sentences are hard to read. There are some poor word choices[1], but yes, all in all this 7th grader is definitely writing above grade level. Hopefully his English teachers give him feedback pertinent to his demonstrated ability. [1] - E.g. "That’s not to say a school’s system is necessarily completely ineffective. Last year, my school had left unblocked the spammy-sounding Unblocked Games 66." would be easier to understand if re-written as: "That’s not to say a school’s system is completely ineffective. Last year, my school failed to block the spammy-sounding "Unblocked Games 66.""
650 11mo ago
There are multiple em dashes present. I strongly suspect AI help.
- aerostable_slug 11mo ago
  I hate this trend because I use em dashes a lot in my writing. Someone tell the AIs to throttle back on them a bit — people might think I'm using AI when I'm not.
  - carsoon 11mo ago
    I don't understand how people use or got used to using em dahshes? How do you even type them? theres no button for it so are you manually inserting, copy pasting it and why not just use a hyphen - instead of an en dash? Was this taught in schools or is it some form of technical writing?

gampleman 11mo ago

Where has educational technology not been failing?

riedel 11mo ago

This reminds me of the times playing snake on our TI 84 calculators.

kkfx 11mo ago

You can't force people to learn, you must interest them, and FLOSS desktops would help much, if well presented. Otherwise you only create dysfunctional dictatorship who only exalt conformism and mediocrity.

armchairhacker 11mo ago

I think laws/regulations are very similar. "Obvious" ones are good (e.g. violence, food safety), analogous to "of course they should block actually inappropriate content". But you can't force people and companies to behave via laws and regulations, and fine-grained laws and regulations don't work, because of loopholes. To get a healthy society, you must teach people how to behave, then (again, still explicitly prevent serious crimes, but otherwise) trust them. Some will take advantage of the system, but they may still face natural and social consequences, and some abuse of the system is OK.

Forgeties79 11mo ago
> But you can't force people and companies to behave via laws and regulations I guess I’m not really following where this logic is going. Are you saying “therefore we should not have laws and regulations”? I highly doubt that’s what you actually mean, but I am unsure how to parse what you do mean if not that.
- armchairhacker 11mo ago
  We should have laws and regulations for things that are important and (relatively) easy to define and enforce. But laws and regulations aren't enough, because people find loopholes, and trying to patch these loopholes with more laws and regulations doesn't work. Examples of "obvious" laws and regulations: physical violence should be policed, companies should have to pay salaries and have basic restrictions on work hours, safety, sanitation, etc. Examples of things that can't really be regulated: "gambling" and "harmful social media". When does a game become "gambling"? When does a site become "social media" and "harmful"? Various countries have legal definitions for these, but they're very long, so companies find loopholes (e.g. sports betting, loot-boxes); or they straight-up break the laws, but the government doesn't bother to enforce them, because it's too difficult and the general population doesn't notice or care enough. Complex and ineffective laws and regulations also tend to have unintended consequences, like Balatro being considered "gambling" in Australia, and the UK's "Online Safety Act" affecting small forums. Part of the reason is that the people writing and enforcing laws and regulations themselves are corrupt. But this goes back to the source: you can't police those people with more laws, because their enforcers are also corrupt, and so on. A society is controlled and its morality is defined by its people, so to some extent, a society must teach its people to be moral and give them the leeway to still behave immoral.

BobbyTables2 11mo ago

Teaching has gotten lazy. In my day, tests were on paper and collected at the end of class. Now they’re online and kids exchange answers by taking the cell phone to the bathroom. Or they will exploit the online nature and compare answers during the passing period AFTER the class a submit it before the next class starts. Teachers can’t be bothered to close the test when class ends! Instead of being 25-50% short response, tests are all multiple choice so they can be automatically graded. To think my teachers recorded grades in a ledger and computed averages by hand for classes of 35+ students…

jeffjeffbear 11mo ago
> Teachers can’t be bothered to close the test when class ends! What about students who need extra time, which can be part of an IEP, and other issues, I don't think that part is lazy. Also a decent amount of the usage of Canvas or similar LMS's is subject to school or district wide rules. Edit: I taught highschool CS during the pandemic to try to help out with issues in my district.
empressplay 11mo ago
Project-based learning / assessment is much more common now. Students have to explain their process when they present their projects, and answer questions, which ensures they did the work. These projects make up most of their grades.
- samarthr1 11mo ago
  Wasn't the push for standardized testing to reduce biases introduced by personal examination?
SiempreViernes 11mo ago
> Back in my day there was nothing wrong with how testing happened, I know because I succeeded in that system. The above is maybe not an entirely fair summary, but I think it captures the spirit of Bobby's comment in vivid detail.
parsimo2010 11mo ago

ryukoposting 11mo ago

Before I lodge my criticism: the kid's right. DNS blocking has always been a non-solution to the "kids screwing around on school computers" problem. When I was his age, we'd pull up breadfish.co.uk on all the computers in a single pod in the library, then un-mute all of them at once. They blocked breadfish, but then we just started pulling it up on youtube. 1:1 ed tech (e.g. chromebooks) probably exacerbates the problem because kids have a single machine that's their own. They can customize it as they please, for better and worse. When I was his age, my school's thin clients would wipe most of your customizations every time you logged out. For the handful of standalone desktops, you'd still have to set stuff up on each machine individually. This limited the effectiveness of the various tricks we played to get past IT guardrails. I think the title is a little misleading, though. The essay details why DNS-level blocking doesn't work in educational environments. The title suggests it'd talk about why ed-tech fails in a more general case. Remember, projectors, document cameras, VHS players, and Smart boards were all red-hot tech at some point. Even today, ed-tech is more than just computers assigned to kids.

singpolyma3 11mo ago

It's depressing that anyone would call internet censorship "educational technology"

mr_frog 11mo ago

I was just looking for unblocked games what is this website

lunias 11mo ago

Sounds pretty similar to how I felt in middle school. I learned a lot while getting around their silly controls. I'm sure things are much more locked down today, but where there's a will there's a way!

mr_frog 11mo ago

Hola

mr_frog 11mo ago
I didnt know the will work